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Why Knicks Should Trade Amar'e Stoudemire Before the NBA Draft

After playing together for a season-and-a-half, it’s apparent that Melo and Amar’e don’t possess the chemistry necessary to take the Knicks to the next level. Their exorbitant salaries also make it virtually impossible for the Knicks to afford to surround them with the pieces necessary to build a championship-caliber team.
One of them needs to be traded, and Amar’e is the obvious choice.

As noted, Melo is the better defender of the two and is more versatile offensively. He has greater range on his shot, is quicker off the dribble and is able to play the 3 and the 4. He also possesses a different skill set than Chandler, who, like Stoudemire, scores most of his points off the pick-and-roll.

Melo’s game is better suited for Coach Woodson’s offense. Unlike D’Antoni, who built his offense around stretching the floor and running the pick-and-roll, Woodson prefers to feature his scorers in the post and with isolation plays.
At the age of 28, Melo is in the prime of his career, whereas Amar’e, though just a year older, is breaking down. He suffered such severe knee injuries early in his career that the Knicks were unable to insure his $100 million contract, and he’s missed several games due to back injuries during his two seasons in New York.

This past season, Amar’e lacked the explosiveness that had made him such a potent offensive force. Unable to get any lift on drives to the basket, he had his shot blocked at an alarming rate and averaged just 17.5 points per game, the lowest since his rookie season.

The best time for the Knicks to move Amar’e would be before Thursday’s [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] draft. The trade market heats up prior to the draft as team’s look to add or unload draft picks and position their rosters and finances for free agency.
The Knicks don’t have a pick in the first round of the draft, and general manager Glen Grunwald may be able to use Amar’e to acquire one. Trading Amar’e could also free up money for the Knicks to offer to a veteran free-agent point guard like Steve Nash.
Trading Stoudemire won’t be easy, though. Teams will be reluctant to take on an uninsured contract worth $64.4 million over three years for an injury-prone player whose skills are in decline. But if Gilbert Arenas and Rashard Lewis have taught us anything, it’s that no player is untradeable.

Grunwald’s best bet is to find a team with plenty of salary cap space that would benefit at the box office from a marquee name. He may have to take some bloated contracts back in return.

The Knicks' organization and their fans should be grateful to Stoudemire for turning around the franchise, but there’s no place for him in the Knicks’ future. This is Carmelo Anthony’s team now. Grunwald needs to try and trade Amar’e this week.

Read in Entirety: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

Perspective of fans and RESPECTED COACHES ALLA PHIL JACKSON, state that these two players WILL NOT SUCCEED together, that is reality and no matter who tries to sing like a canary and state otherwise is living in a dream world.

Melo and Stat are set in their ways, can they evolve and learn new things, maybe but will they willingly do it - most likely, NO!

David Kahn is sitting back, waiting for a trade that makes no sense, so he can jump all over it.

I'm pretty confident that he can be sold on the idea of having an "explosive" big to play center, and run the 15 PnR, with Rubio.

Give us Peković, one of their 4 million wing players, and a salary dump. I'll take Nikola's hustle on the boards, and how he just smashes into the paint, seals his man off, and can make that easy baby hook. He doesn't need plays run for him (or more importantly, one specific play over and over) to be effective. He plays D, he rebounds, he can play a more traditional PF, and let everyone else operate in their comfort areas.

As long as there are dumb-dumbs in the world, there will be easy targets to fleece. Yea it sounds cruel, and it's kinda unfortunate...but ****...it's reality.

You have to go pursue these deals tho, they don't come to you (unless Otis Smith is the GM.) Glen needs to blow up Kahn's cell phone right now, and sell him on one single idea, the explosiveness of a Rubio-Stoudemire PnR. That's it. It can't hurt.

Perspective of fans and RESPECTED COACHES ALLA PHIL JACKSON, state that these two players WILL NOT SUCCEED together, that is reality and no matter who tries to sing like a canary and state otherwise is living in a dream world.

Melo and Stat are set in their ways, can they evolve and learn new things, maybe but will they willingly do it - most likely, NO!

No...im clearly not Management, but im Smart enough to REALIZE, Stat just came off one of his worse seasons and his Value is complete GARBAGE at the moment, honestly if you were GM in this league would YOU trade for Amare? is his 100 mill uninsured contract, bad knees, and bad back worth it? is PHIL Jackson some kind of Fortune teller? to say that Amare and Melo wont work together? he has his rights to say they wont, hell they have yet to prove they can work together thus far, does that mean AMARE STOUDEMIRE is getting traded before the draft or during free agency? no Melo, Stat, and Lin weather we like it or not will be Knicks this upcoming season.

Can they evolve to learn new things? wake up, Stat is trying to develop a post game, Melo is trying to get in better shape (reportedly lost 12 pounds i believe) so you cant say they aren't willingly trying. Give this team a full training camp to work out the Kinks and we see where we go from there if it does not work this season. THEN i have no doubt some moves may be made and they can really question them selves about whether it'll work.

People been saying trade state since last season? (including myself) Guess what the guy is still here.

I don't see why people bother to read Bleachers report thats like the worse place to go, it's just full of rumors, wishes and trashy articles about a whole lot of NOTHING.

Originally Posted by Sage

Finding a team that will deal would be the issue. I'd be all for getting rid of him and freeing up that cap, but I can't imagine a team wanting him.

THIS basically sums up everything, even if you WANTED to get rid of Amare, Nobody is taking on that contract, especially not with the way he performed this previous season. If your going to make any moves with Amare it would be best to wait till he can somewhat increase his value again.

Except, it seems like a long shot that he'll be able to regain the value he had when the team was comprised of completely different parts.

We can't have either Melo, or STAT acquiesce to the other. But for STAT to regain what he had when he first got here (if at all possible), we'd need Melo to just space the floor, open up the lane for the PnR, and shoot jumpers.

We saw that Melo, even out of shape, is at he best when making occasional forays into the paint, and operating down there, then he supplements it with the jumper. That's directly interfering with STAT setting the pick, and rolling, if Melo is bringing his defender closer to the cup, while you gotta assume Tyson's man is somewhere in the vicinity.

So it has to be "your turn, my turn, your turn, my turn" and annihilate any sort of ebb and flow.

STAT's value IS what he can do with a good PG, and some high PnR. Instead of waiting on him to possibly regain value, sell another team on the idea of STAT on their roster, running the PnR. If you're trying to sell something to someone, you make them invasion the item in their possession, not "see what I have, you want it, right?"

I do agree that it's a tough sell, but still....there is a David Kahn in the NBA, we need to take advantage of that. Right. Now.

Amare isnt tradeable. His actions in the miami series and his recent conduct on twitter will make teams think hes becoming a headache. Add that with the bloated uninsured contract he has not to mention the helth problems...So yea, can we stop over valuing this guy already and can we give up this silly notion that hes easily tradeable.

No one is saying it's an easy trade, at least I'm not, I actually said it's a tough sell.

But to just say "oh well...it's not gonna happen, cause it's a tough sell" is insane. Did we not see Nene just get a contract that was called a bit inflated, and then get traded....while having an injury riddled season? Gilbert Grape Arenas had a ravaged knee, over $60M left, brought guns into the locker room...and then was traded. Yea they might have had insurance on the contracts (not sure about Gilbert, but I see no reason why Nene didn't) but folks act like teams don't have to pay the premiums on the policies, and I don't know if they understand that you're still on the hook for a portion of the player's salary. Insurance on a contract is not a "get out of jail free" card, so while all teams would love to have some insurance on huge contracts, it doesn't alleviate them from paying portions of it, should something happen.

So yea, it's a tough sell. But if a team thinks that they can get something out of the player, they might take that risk. Once again....you tell a team "look, Amar'e is a year removed from playing center for us, and running the high PnR...hell, he even did it effectively when Melo was out of the line up. You guys can plug him in at the 5, and you're likely to get that production out of him. It's what he did his entire NBA career, it's what he's comfortable doing. It doesn't fit our scheme, so lets say we move him to you and you guys can move [insert player] without missing a beat."

You gotta dress it up a bit. It's not "pleeeeeeeease, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease take Amar'e!! We don't want him!!!! oh my god plleeeeeeease."

I still see value in Amar'e in this franchise and this team. I don't want to trade him for an unproven role player and salary dump.

Not after we stole a game from the champs in a series (which is as well as OKC was able to do) and finally seem to have some kind of a team coming together for a full season. It will serve us well to be patient and try to find ways to make this work. Then in two years when Amar'e is entering in his contract season we can look at trading him. His value will be much higher then it is currently.

I suspect we will get a better seeding and a better result in the playoffs this year and Amar'e will be a part of that and teams will look to trade for closer to his real value. Not this peko****, 2nd round pick bull****, but honest to goodness star packages that make sense. It would be a mistake to "sell low" on our $100mill investment, especially when there have been improvements in his overall game even with injuries and weight issues.

I know its typical reaction to a sub-par season for a star player to just dump him for "potential" but the fact remains that you will get pennies on your dollar if you move him now. And the guy isn't a bad player. He gave us 17/7 over an injury plagued, team shifting, family dying, roller-coaster year.

I know its typical reaction to a sub-par season for a star player to just dump him for "potential" but the fact remains that you will get pennies on your dollar if you move him now. And the guy isn't a bad player. He gave us 17/7 over an injury plagued, team shifting, family dying, roller-coaster year.

This is the main reason to keep him. The only reason to move him was if the Knicks lost their arbitration. If that happened then it would force the knicks to consider moving his contract since the amount would of locked the knicks into becoming a lesser team as they would be forced to shed assets to stay under the apron for the rest of Amare's contract. Now it looks like they won't have too. Also that 17/7 and the extenuating circumstance of the season is why I think its crazy to assume he couldn't be moved, the real question has been will they move him and not its honestly should they move him.

I still see value in Amar'e in this franchise and this team. I don't want to trade him for an unproven role player and salary dump.

Not after we stole a game from the champs in a series (which is as well as OKC was able to do) and finally seem to have some kind of a team coming together for a full season. It will serve us well to be patient and try to find ways to make this work. Then in two years when Amar'e is entering in his contract season we can look at trading him. His value will be much higher then it is currently.

I suspect we will get a better seeding and a better result in the playoffs this year and Amar'e will be a part of that and teams will look to trade for closer to his real value. Not this peko****, 2nd round pick bull****, but honest to goodness star packages that make sense. It would be a mistake to "sell low" on our $100mill investment, especially when there have been improvements in his overall game even with injuries and weight issues.

I know its typical reaction to a sub-par season for a star player to just dump him for "potential" but the fact remains that you will get pennies on your dollar if you move him now. And the guy isn't a bad player. He gave us 17/7 over an injury plagued, team shifting, family dying, roller-coaster year.

Everything you said will make sense, only if Amar'e comes back, not needing to be fed the ball in the pick and roll.

I only mentioned Pekovic, because I watched a good number of T'wolves games (took advantage of the lower League Pass price) and he averaged around 19 points and 11 boards a game, without having plays called for him. Which meant Kevin Love still got his touches where he wanted, and needed them, Rubio was able to feed Beasley (when he played), and others.

I'm going about it in a much more analytical fashion. It's not the only way to look at it, and I can most certainly be proven wrong by STAT coming back and utilizing the post game that he should be learning from "The Dream" right now.

But, I don't want my $20M PF to only be effective when running one play, from one spot. If he rebounded and played D, maybe it would be more tolerable, but STAT didn't do that last season. The season where he had to co-exist with Melo and Tyson occupying spots that were deliberately cleared out for him in the previous season..because he was THE GUY. That doesn't fly now, because he's one of the GUYS, plural. If he's at his best playing the 5, with everyone else spaced out, that clearly doesn't work with Melo and Tyson. I brought up Pekovic because he operated on the court with Love, Beasley, and earlier in the season, Darko. He was serviceable the entire time, and his value to the team on the offensive end was not running the PnR all game, but it was crashing the offensive boards.

How many times can we expect STAT to crash the boards if Tyson is stepping out to set the pick?

Yea Pek was taken in the second round, and no he's not a big name. But his value isn't tied to one play on the offensive end. I'll take rebounding on both ends, defense on the block, and the ability to score without having to run the same play over and over again for any sort of consistent offense, over having a big name player who's extremely one dimensional.

I'm not being reactionary. I was questioning STAT, along with a few others, while everyone was telling us to give him time, then "oh wait, he might be injured", then "he has to lose the muscle he added for his back", then "his brother died", then "but...but...he came here first, he revived the Knicks."

If he returns and gives the Knicks the rebounding and defense they'll need from the 4, and if his offensive game evolves a bit so it fits with what the Knicks can achieve with a 4 who seals his man early and can score down low, or crashes the offensive boards...I'll be wrong, and happy as hell about it.